Governments globally are being urged to immediately halt the use of food crops for fuel as new figures show Europe turns 10,000 tonnes of wheat every day into ethanol for cars.

Transport & Environment has labelled the push for increased production as “immoral” in a time of acute global food shortages and a collapse in supplies of key grains from Ukraine and Russia

That’s the equivalent of 15 million loaves of bread – and Europe’s biofuels lobby is actually pushing for more “crop burning”.

But in its new study, campaign group Transport & Environment has labelled the push for increased production as “immoral” in a time of acute global food shortages and a collapse in supplies of key grains from Ukraine and Russia.

Maik Marahrens, biofuels manager at T&E, said: “Every year we burn millions of tonnes of wheat and other vital grains to power our cars. This is unacceptable in the face of a global food crisis. Governments must urgently stop the burning of food crops in cars to reduce pressure on critical supplies.”

T&E’s data reveals that removing wheat from European biofuels would offset more than 20% of the collapsed Ukrainian wheat supplies to the global market. In countries such as Egypt, which imports over 60% of its wheat, mainly from Russia and Ukraine, these additional supplies to the market would be life-saving.

Now, a group of leading European NGOs, including T&E, has told global governments that stable energy supplies to people and the economy must not come at the expense of food security or lead food price inflation to spiral out of control.

There are growing calls, particularly among Europe’s biofuels lobby (ePure and European Biodiesel Board), for Russian oil to be replaced with biofuels made from crops such as wheat, corn, barley, sunflower, rapeseed and other vegetable oils.

It’s a contentious subject but T&E says that Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine has “decimated the breadbasket” of Europe. Ukraine and Russia together provide about a quarter of the globally traded wheat and barley, 15% of corn and over 60% of sunflower oil.

T&E data also reveals that even if Europe were to double the amount of farmland it dedicates to biofuels – equivalent to at least 10% of the EU’s farmland for crops – this would replace just 7% of the EU’s imports of oil from Russia. To replace all Russian oil imports with home-grown biofuels would need at least two-thirds of the bloc’s farmland for crops.

Maik Marahrens concluded: “The biofuels industry is stepping up its lobbying efforts to push for more grains like wheat and corn to replace Russian oil. In doing so it is cynically taking advantage of people’s concerns over fuel prices, putting profit over food security. This is immoral while millions of people around the world cannot afford even a loaf of bread.”